In the mood for some authentic Los Angeles tacos, my buddies and I set off for King Taco near downtown in the MacArthur Park area. Although this wasn’t the original location, we figured they still served up some pretty good tacos. I could tell it was pretty authentic because it was mostly filled with Hispanic people and everyone seemed to speak Spanish at the counter. By the time I figured out what I wanted, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to order in English, but luckily the cashiers turned out to be bilingual.

I started my order with a carne asada taco (1.25). It came with meat, a hot salsa, onions and cilantro. I ordered without the onions. On top of that, I wanted a quesadilla (3.75) and although my first choice was chicken, I was told that this was already cooked and mixed in with vegetables, so ended up choosing carne asada again. I knew this would still not be enough, so to finish off the meal I ordered the cheese nachos (3.75). Then I headed to my table to await my order.

With a lot of queso.

Order numbers were announced over the microphone and completely in Spanish, so I had to pay extra close attention. One time I stood up thinking it was my number, only to find out I had a good five minutes more to wait. When my number was truly announced, I grabbed my food and brought it back to my table. The first thing I dug into was the taco. Although the cilantro was missing along with the onion, I was still happy to find no other vegetables. The carne asada was delicious and the sauce was much spicier than I had expected. It still had great flavor, but I definitely needed water to go along with it.

Then came the quesadilla. This thing was huge and totally overflowing with cheese. The carne asada was just as good as before, but the ratio of cheese to meat was a bit high. I mean I love my cheese, but I do like a good balance in my quesadilla.

A waste of cheese and carbs.

Finally, I opened up the nachos and was greeted with disappointment. Not only were the chips covered with generic cheese sauce, but the nachos themselves looked like they had come from a bag. Don’t get me wrong, I do think these sort of nachos have a place, but at a baseball game, not a Mexican restaurant. I ate them, but I wasn’t too happy to do so.

So the moral of the story is that King Taco, as the name implies, is really a place meant for tacos. The quesadilla was passable and the nachos were pretty bad, but the taco was truly great and a great deal at $1.25.